Lightning in a Bottle
by PhaerynTao
Summary: Brief, sudden, yet defiantly unforgettable. If only they could be preserved, tightly sealed and imprisoned forever. Prompt series, ongoing.
1. Error

_#223_

He's going to leave, I keep thinking. He's going to leave, and either never return or drag me down with him.

Each time I regret it. Deeply.

And yet I keep moaning, clutching him tightly and letting my sharp nails rake down his exquisite back, so divinely scarred, the weight of the world curving his spine into a delicious 's' shape.

Mello looks like an animal on top of me. Bent back, like a werewolf mid-transformation. He's a monster, everyone knows that, but with me, he's a pathetic creature in need of something akin to love. I can't give him that, but I can try.

And I try my damnedest. I cry louder. His voice is muffled in the sweat stained skin of my neck. He's close. _We're _close. Closer than ever. We become one person, if that's even possible, and with my brain pumped full of statistics and science I know it's not.

'Mail' escapes his dry cracked lips, soft puff of air, soulful release of what can never see the light of day. Luckily I'm just as part of the darkness as the shadows that shroud our lethargic forms. We breathe in sync, falling in and out of consciousness, tasting sand grains and being teased by languid colorless rainbows behind our eyelids.

It's hard, but I swallow the grudge and the agony in favor of undying loyalty and a toothy smile. I hate him for ensnaring me. I hate him for knowing I cant refuse him.

He's finished. My stomach lurches, and I repress the vomit just aching to come forth from my strangled throat. His hand tantalizingly rests on my chest.

Mello. My only friend, and greatest error.


	2. Voodoo

_#220_

One by one, Near's deft fingers stuck the pins cleanly into the soft doll. He didn't know what Kira's face looked like, and was dead sure it beared no resemblance to the black button eyes, knitted pallid skin, and ear to ear smile stitched haphazardly with onyx threads.

Close, perhaps.

L once told him, so many, many years ago that if one's feelings were strong enough they could transcend space and even time.

To which Near replied, "Nonsense." The detective, a ghostly smile, in all of its cryptic haunting glory upon his thin chapped lips, appeared to concede to his successor's emotionless yet terminal scoff.

Now, Near breathed deeply, imagining Kira's handsome, charismatic, despicable soul within that of this doll, riddled with needles sharp as his mind. This was a difficult task. He believed this poor excuse for a human being to be his one and only enemy, but even with that in mind to conjure the emotions appropriate for such hatred would prove to be...problematic.

Six feet under, L rested quietly, spirit fermented and uneasy.

Sparks in his fingers, empty eyes flew open at the electricity under his veins. Just the thought of his mentor, long since passed, never quite fulfilled, was enough to make his tender fist squeeze the plaything like it was a stress ball.

Trademark delicate horseshoe smile appeared . He picked up another pin, stuck in the spot where the doll's medulla oblongata would reside had it been an actual person.

A gracious distance away, Light Yagami's hand gripped the nape of his neck.


	3. Sincerely

_#197_

_Dear..._

No. He scratched the word out. It felt inappropriate for some reason. There was, after all, nothing tender about anything he had on his mind.

_Misa Amane, _

_I am not a shallow person, and something tells me neither are you. Yet you cling to your trivial ways like you're drowning. Why do you emit that fake laugh when in truth I know you sound almost mature when you chuckle? Why don't you just look to your left instead of your right-_

He quirked his eyebrow at what he had just scribbled down. That didn't quite make sense in literal abundance. Strange, he had never been one for metaphors.

_You never knew just how much went on underneath this 'raccoon ass', as you called my mop of hair. I would be studying a row of logistics until a luminescent hint of corn silk hair suddenly laid waste to my train of thought. Sometimes I wish you weren't who I know you are. A murderer, an unabashedly juvenile infant obsessed with that which she does not understand. A superficial beauty caked with clown colors; and I've seen what you look like before you 'put on your face', so to speak. You don't need makeup. _

He paused, monitoring his heart rate suddenly, noting calmly that his pulse had gone up. He had honestly never realized how stimulating it was to write down one's unrequited feelings. Unpleasant, a frontier he'd rather not visit, but stimulating nonetheless.

_Other times I wish you'd stop smiling at me. Because as transparent as you are, you're not as bad of an actress as your pathetic sitcom dramas convey. Occasionally I'm not sure whether you're just doing it for the novelty, or if the warmth in them is real. Either way, I have to fight to keep my skin it's current shade. Just shut up and never talk to me again until you learn how to be a good honest little girl. Because that's all you are. A little girl who found her father's gun. _

His hand trembled slightly, but his face never faltered.

_I could give you what you need, you know. I know what you need. You never will, but I know. I've always known. _

"..."

_Love..._

Scratch that out. Inappropriate.

_Sincerely, L. _

And then he lit it on fire, letting it crumble into ash.


	4. By M

_#243_

"_Why I Think God is a Woman"_

_by M._

_Girls always pay a piteous amount of attention_

_to those.._

_seemingly insignificant details._

_Look around you. The earth is proof. _

_They always nag you into _

_doing what they believe is right _

_without saying_

_a single word. _

_Their screams_

_make my ears ring_

_every time I reread_

_the great flood_

_their indifference is_

_maddening._

_Sometimes I cannot handle_

_the disappointment_

_I am undoubtedly sure _

_they feel towards me._

_Reminding you how inferior you are,_

_how superior._

_Women love you so much_

_they can let you go._

_But no matter how hard you try_

_you can't do the same for them. _

"Where did you find that?"

Matt looked upward nonchalantly. He knew he was in trouble, but his personal philosophy was not to exacerbate the foreboding inevitable. "I didn't know you wrote poetry, Mello."

Mello narrowed his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about, I don't."

Matt shrugged, laying the poem on the bed, feigning surrender to his roommate's claim. "Yeah, you're right. What on earth was I thinking."


End file.
